In spite of her constant travel, Susan did quite well in school. By the third semester of her last year in school she had garnered enough points to put her above a three-point average in her overall performance. Her main drawback, she ever complained, was her French which she barely passed, though she spoke the language quite fluently, as when she spoke to the front desk personnel at a hotel in Geneva. To my amazement, she actually spoke French fluently. "She's picked up a working knowledge of the language while working at the Hotel Consul," she had bragged. But, then again, Susan was quite a linguist in a way. She spoke Hakka, Mandarin and Japanese apart from English, Bahasa Malaysia and her mother tongue.
I have always considered her a fast learner and competitive too. She had told me of an incident while she was still a tot. Having no one taking care of the children at home, her parents sent her to preschool together with her elder brother. In her final year exam, her result actually exceeded that of her brother. But he got promoted to primary one while she got retained for another year, and with her juniors too, being underage for the primary one class, much to her disappointment. Her competitive trait would manifest later during her secondary school sojourn. For instance, she was a Minister of Health in her school cabinet, a post she was appointed to having been elected in her school's parliamentary election. She had also shown some competitive ability in the athletic field. She represented her school in several events, particularly in the shot put event and the 200 meter dash. She once represented the State in hockey. In a way she was an all-rounder, a jack-of-all-trade but a master-of-none, I ever teased her, much to her feigned chagrin.
In a quite different subject, She has related to me of an experience working under strange situation in Europe. As a student-worker, she once volunteered for a waitress job in a function held at an antiquated castle in Switzerland, which involved the rich and the famous from all over Europe. The party lasted the whole day long. It was a party of a kind, she explained, which started from very early in the morning with various dishes served at intervals continuing right into the night leaving everyone exhausted and tired, including those who consumed those dishes, who would also be drunk by the day's end. Every time she raised this subject, she would brag of how she withstood the ordeal of working more than 15 hours in a stretch in an environment where efficiency was exacted. And I would teasingly feign wonder if the function might not have been one organized by the Freemasons of Europe.
I have always considered her a fast learner and competitive too. She had told me of an incident while she was still a tot. Having no one taking care of the children at home, her parents sent her to preschool together with her elder brother. In her final year exam, her result actually exceeded that of her brother. But he got promoted to primary one while she got retained for another year, and with her juniors too, being underage for the primary one class, much to her disappointment. Her competitive trait would manifest later during her secondary school sojourn. For instance, she was a Minister of Health in her school cabinet, a post she was appointed to having been elected in her school's parliamentary election. She had also shown some competitive ability in the athletic field. She represented her school in several events, particularly in the shot put event and the 200 meter dash. She once represented the State in hockey. In a way she was an all-rounder, a jack-of-all-trade but a master-of-none, I ever teased her, much to her feigned chagrin.
In a quite different subject, She has related to me of an experience working under strange situation in Europe. As a student-worker, she once volunteered for a waitress job in a function held at an antiquated castle in Switzerland, which involved the rich and the famous from all over Europe. The party lasted the whole day long. It was a party of a kind, she explained, which started from very early in the morning with various dishes served at intervals continuing right into the night leaving everyone exhausted and tired, including those who consumed those dishes, who would also be drunk by the day's end. Every time she raised this subject, she would brag of how she withstood the ordeal of working more than 15 hours in a stretch in an environment where efficiency was exacted. And I would teasingly feign wonder if the function might not have been one organized by the Freemasons of Europe.
Before the end of her last semester, she also took an examination with the Black & Decker of
After graduating, she was given a choice of doing her internship program in any hotel in any part of the world which has an affiliation with her College. She chose a hotel in
